It is worth noting that this season’s first Soweto derby takes place at a time when Liberia is likely to confirm one of the continent’s greatest footballing talents, George Weah, as its next president.
The derby, in case there are those who don’t know, features log leaders Orlando Pirates against defending league champions Kaizer Chiefs at the FNB stadium on Saturday.
It may not have the same weight as the first democratic elections in a war-torn country, but if a president were to arise from the football community, he would have played in this fixture.
The Pirates-Chiefs match epitomises the unifying and yet equally divisive role of football in this country. For 90 minutes, the Zuma-Mbeki; Xhosa-Zulu, first economy-second economy dichotomy is bridged as the different tribes go on to the battlefield.
For that period, the BEE’d and the under-classes will find that in the two teams they have more in common than the economists and sociologists suggest during the rest of the year.
No other football fixture comes close to explaining what West Indian scholar and intellectual, CLR James, meant when he wrote, in the seminal Beyond The Boundary, on the relationship between sport and society: ”What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?”
Had James lived in Africa, he could easily have written: ”What do they know of football who only football know?”’
Regrettably, though, there are sport-atheists who would want to reduce Saturday’s event to a ”bunch of grown men chasing a pigskin”.
They would do well to note that the importance of soccer in Africa was demonstrated when the belligerents in the Nigeria-Biafra conflict declared a two-day ceasefire because the king of football, Pele, was in the area and neither party wanted him to be caught in the crossfire.
Not all the actors in this as-always eagerly anticipated Soweto derby appreciate the role they play in their society, but they know enough that it is one match they have to win. None of them needs extra motivation.
Despite their status as champions, Chiefs go into the fixture as underdogs after an indifferent start to the season. They have had six draws in a row, giving them a total of eight stalemates and three wins in 11 matches.
Despite having the only unbeaten team in the league, Ernst Middendorp is probably the most unpopular Chiefs coach since Joe Frickleton and his all-conquering but extremely boring side of the mid-1980s.
But tradition dictates that Middendorp’s sins will all be forgiven if his side upsets the apple cart by beating the high-riding Buccaneers. It did the trick for former Pirates coach Jean-Yves Kerjean, whose decidedly defensive outfit somehow managed a 3-0 win over Chiefs in the 2001/02 season. The following year, when the joy of that victory wore off, Kerjean was fired.
Much as it is said before every derby that form counts for nought, Chiefs’ problems are not about form but rather about substance.
When a team as pedigreed as Chiefs have to play midfielder John ”Shoes” Moshoeu — who turns 40 in two months’ time — as a lone striker, you know that the team is devoid of talent up front.
Things are further compounded by Emmanuel ”Scara” Ngobese — the best of the current poor crop of players — picking up his third booking and disqualifying himself from Saturday’s match.
Pirates, on the other hand, are reeling after losing to Golden Arrows last Saturday, their first league defeat and first loss in any competition since falling to Bloemfontein Celtic in the SAA Supa Eight in August.
Still, they look as threatening each time they cross the centre line as they look vulnerable when their opponents do.
Pirates coach Kostadin Papic and his players deny they have any defensive frailties, which simply confirms that they live in a fool’s paradise.
Papic has won the fans over with a brand of attacking football modelled on the need to score more than their opponents instead of ensuring that his team does not concede.
Unlike Chiefs, Papic has the luxury of calling on a whole lot of attack-minded players who include the likes of Lebohang Mokoena and Gift Leremi, who have been converted from strikers to wingers because of an embarrassment of riches up front.
Middendorp has already started playing five defenders — with the two rightbacks, Cyril Nzama and Jimmy Tau, both in the side against teams (Moroka Swallows and Classic) whose offensive prowess is un-heralded. The question is how many will he play at the back against a side as attacking as Pirates?
As for predictions, whatever the result, Middendorp will come to appreciate why this derby is more than just a football match and how true James’s observations were about sport being much more than just play.